Hot damn. I guess I would actually marry her again if I had to do it all over.

My GM texts me last night before the raid. Something to the effect of “Your healing ICC tonight? I wish I wasn’t so tired so I could come see you yell at people and fail”. Well it was something like that. She knows I dislike Paladin healing. BTW yeah we kid like that. She’s got a dry sense of humor like mine.

I am a tank. It’s what I do. I can go ret and rock face, I can go Holy to round out a group for a five man. But at heart I love to tank. I used to firmly and viciously avoid healing in a run because of a little secret that most hybrid tanks keep to themselves. We don’t want to get shoved into healing just because we “can”.

When you are a tank you constantly have to fight to stay on the gear edge (vs the mobs, vs the DPS). You have to constantly bring your A game because EVERYONE can see when you don’t. You’ve got 2-3 other tanks breathing down your neck just waiting to take your spot. You don’t want to do ANYTHING that jeopardizes your spot as a frontline tank. Especially healing, and there’s NO help for you if your good at it.

When I started raiding I was the last tank to hit 70. We all were really cool about swapping spots for the two raids per week. However our strongest tank at the time was a Druid and we tanks decided for the good of the guild (we weren’t really organized like we are now) the Druid would go both raids and the Warrior and I would flip-flop.

I was cool with this (some days it really really sucked) but we were progressing on content even if I wasn’t at the front. However I KNEW I was just one healer /gquitting from getting stuck in a healing role. (Secret: No I do not think Healing is “sissy”. I understand how hard it is and I take care of my healers.) I did not want to be the guy people looked at and sheepishly asked if I’d go to heals.

I bitched loudly about healing. I cursed and made it known I hated it when I had to heal to get a raid off the ground. I was two steps from being a big baby about it. But I did not want to lose my spot as a tank. (We don’t have a maintank spot and we still rotate). Yes I was insecure.

You can fit 5-6 DPS in per raid. 2-3 healers (Secret: We’ve almost always gone with 2. Keeps us lean and mean). Then lastly you can fit 2 tanks in per raid. When you’ve got 4+ tanks in the guild it’s really easy to “lose” your spot even without anyone taking it. Especially to healing.

Fast forward 2 years later. I am a secure and vetted tank. So secure that I’m able to offer up my spot for other tanks and I’ll come go as DPS on raids. I’m cool sitting out raids so other people get some shots at gear and experience. Last night I was even so secure I moved myself to heals to get our raid up and running.

I actually enjoyed it. My Resto Druid partner did a great job on the raid with a few “extras” on the tank and me and my Beacon of Light took care of the tanks and I did a few extras on the raid. I screwed the pooch once and I should have bubbled one of our rogues who got a little trigger happy, but other than that it wasn’t too bad. Lower Spire plus Festergut and Rotface all went down smooth. (We also had some great DPS who played smartly and that helped a bit).

My pre-raid warm up speech was basically, “I’m healing tonight. You bitches better make this easy. I’ve never healed ICC.” And my raiders totally kicked ass. Kudos to all 9 of them.

Some random observations I learned.

1. WTF is it with all the steps and line of sight issues?
2. Why does only mail SP gear drop? And why is it better than my plate gear? Srs. Why is my Paladin wearing Shammy antlers on his head?
3. The difference between a good Pally healer and a bad one is timing your heals. Soon as I saw decimate being cast I’d queue up Holy Light to land right after decimate hits.
4. Whose your Daddy? Aura Mastery, that’s who.
5. Healing in ICC is a lot of “nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing HOLYFUCKSHITSPAM”.

I had debated between the FoL vs the HoL spec. I ended up going HoL, because fights like Marrowgar and Festergut seemed to lend themselves to it and those were the two fights I was worried about. (One spec is big crit little fast heals, one spec is big slow mega heals with unlimited mana)

I found myself casting lots of Flash of Lights, but man it was nice to reach down and POUR out the heals with Holy Light carpet bombing when I needed too. Going by our WoL I casted FoL Vs HoL on an almost 2:1 ratio. If you add in Holy Shock, I may be on a 3:1 with HoL vs FoL/HoS ratio. Man I don’t know if that’s enough to make me go grab the T9 4 piece and regem/respec. I’m leaning towards doing it.

Most of our regular raiders are fairly geared and experienced (unless they go into “short bus” mode like last friday) so I’m not spamming heals constantly where HoL would be more attractive.

Dunno. I had a blast and enjoyed the challenge. I don’t want to make it a habit, but it wasn’t all that bad and I learned a lot.

I didn’t even yell at anyone. Although I did ask “Why is there a small ooze in the middle of my raid?” once. “My” raid…I’m such a prick.